[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

What are your favourite music and poetry combinations?

I'm currently into Radiohead (OK Computer) and Dylan Thomas, as a kind of simultaneous explosion of beautiful misery.

Or, is this not something you do? Should poetry be listened to in silence, be music in and of itself?

Sarah-Jane

[John Isbell]

Hi Sarah-Jane,

I do a fair bit, while editing my religion MS., of listening to Randy Newman's "God's Song": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0TvfqmWf4M
It may explain a lot. I also listen to Muddy Waters, "Got My Mojo Working," to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now," and to Bob Marley's "War" and Mix-Up Mix-Up," kind of on rotation.
Right now as I type we're listening again to Dylan's online concert from Sunday. Good stuff.

Cheers,
John

[Chris O'Carroll]

Radiohead and Dylan Thomas, eh? Sounds like you're interested in after-the-fact combinations rather than performances in which the poets and musicians actually collaborated with each other.

The Beats often read to jazz accompaniment, and a number of composers set Edith Sitwell's poems to music, but I know of those performances without having heard many of them and without feeling any strong attachment. Richard Wilbur collaborated with Leonard Bernstein on the operetta Candide and with William Schuman on the cantata On Freedom's Ground. I've read what he wrote for the latter project, and it's mighty strong stuff, but I've never heard it performed.

Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is one piece of poetry performed with music that I have always found powerful and engaging. (I might mention some Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs as well, but I see no point in launching an argument about whether those songwriters are truly "poets" or whether arts and entertainment journalists called them that just to make themselves appear hip and sensitive.)

I have no musical ability, but now that you've put the thought in my mind, I may find myself musing about what tunes would be good fits with some of my favorite poems.

[John Isbell]

I've seen the Bernstein/Wilbur Candide and it sustained attention. For me, the most memorable aria was "We are all victims of love," or what have you, sung by the syphilitic chorus, with great choreography in the staging I got to see.
Gil Scott-Heron is consistently great IMO. John Cooper Clarke shows up in some poetry anthologies, and R.D. Laing did a splendid sonnet cycle to music called "Life before Death," out of print now and hard to find. He plays trumpet on it. It's not online.

Cheers,
John

[John Isbell]

... just to add the requisite mention of watching The Wizard of Oz on mute while playing Dark Side of the Moon, which you start when the MGM lion roars. Possibly while tripping.

John

[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll

Richard Wilbur collaborated with Leonard Bernstein on the operetta Candide and with William Schuman on the cantata On Freedom's Ground. I've read what he wrote for the latter project, and it's mighty strong stuff, but I've never heard it performed.

William Schuman: On Freedom's Ground

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9mZAKgmOMc

[Mark McDonnell]

Those Aesop tracks are great, Cameron!

Sarah-Jane. As far as listening to music (especially music with lyrics) at the same time as reading poetry… No! Ha. It would be like trying to watch two films at once. I might have something soft and tinkly in the background, maybe.

Weirdly though, I do sometimes like obscenely loud, repetitive, barely controlled rock music when I'm trying to write a poem. Stooges, Dinosaur Jr or Can or The Fall or something. That's different somehow and seems to block out any external thoughts and allow me get me into a kind of focused hypnosis.

[Quincy Lehr]

I used to pop a few wake-up pills, listen to Motorhead, and read T.S. Eliot, but I'm a responsible adult these days.

[Mark McDonnell]

Thanks for that, Mark. It's on Apple Music, btw

Cheers John. Yes, I just checked and it's on Spotify too. I have it on CD with helpful lyric booklet. I'd love to know what you think of it. Stick with it...its charms creep up on you.

[Jennifer Reeser]

So I had nothing, Sarah-Jane, when you first posted this -- but today I was reading Jim's "Big Ag..." poem over on Metrical, and one of my favorite songs came on. They are perfect together. The step-grandfather who raised me was an actual, bona fide cowboy, by the way. He rode for the King Ranch in Texas back in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgRQEO8iKA

Don Edwards, Coyotes

Coyotes Lyrics

Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas
His face was burnt deep by the sun
Part history, part sage, part Mexican
He was there when Pancho Villa was young

And he'd tell you a tale of the old days
When the country was wild all around
Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way
And listen while the coyotes howl

They go, boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo
Boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo

Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Geronimo's gone
And Sam Bass is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone

Well he cursed all the roads and the oilmen
And he cursed the automobile
Said, "This is no place for an hombre like I am
In this new world of asphalt and steel."

Then he'd look off someplace in the distance
At something only he could see
He'd say, "All that's left now of the old days:
Those damned, old coyotes and me."

And they go, boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo
Boo-yip, boo-yip, boo
Boodi-boo-yip, boo-doo-yip, boo-doo

Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Now Quantrill is gone
Stand Watie is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone

One morning, they searched his adobe
He disappeared without even a word
But that night, as the moon crossed the mountain
One more coyote was heard